04 November 2014

George Washington, Perpetuity, and the Young

The perpetuity of this nation depends upon the moral and religious
training of the young.

In the earliest appearance that I can find, Marion Lawrance’s 1916
Special Days in the Sunday School, it
is already cited as a “famous quotation” and yet, for all its fame, earlier occurrences
elude me. There are other forms of this saying about what the perpetuity of this
nation depends on—the “religious education of the young”, for example—but none
of them is even that old.

Looking at it from the other end I find from searching through
George Washington’s works in print and the Library of Congress online
collection of his papers that the general was not fond of the word perpetuity,
using it only in the legal phrase “in perpetuity”, and he appears to have shown
little or no interest in the moral or religious education of the young. The
moral and/or religious education and/or training and/or instruction of the
young seems to have been on intense interest to a number of people during the
nineteenth century, especially during the latter half, but not to the father of
his country. (I’m speaking here of the words,
by the way, not necessarily the subject.)

Perpetuity is an odd
word to have chosen here, anyway—isn’t a word like perpetuation more like what the author must have had in mind? I
tried various combinations of synonyms, but without any luck.

The phrase “perpetuity of our nation” or the like seems to
have been popular in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. As
examples let me give you:

William Jennings Bryan in 1896: Our form of government
recognizes the right of the States to do certain things, and the perpetuity of this nation depends
as much upon respecting local self-government as it does upon recognizing
national supremacy. [The First Battle: A Story of the Campaign of 1896 (W. B.
Conkey Company, 1896), p. 519]

The mayor of Seattle in 1906: As has been well said, the perpetuity of our nation and
institutions, and the welfare and happiness of our people, depend upon the
intelligence of our citizenship. [Proceedings at the Opening of the
Seattle Public Library Building, December 19, 1906 (Ivy Press, 1907, unnumbered page]

It seems curious that Washington should have so neatly
anticipated a turn of phrase that would not become popular until a century had
passed, and that that saying should not emerge until that very time. Honestly,
it passeth belief. My strong suspicion, given this, is that this saying—who
ever really said it—belongs to this era, rather than to the time of the
founders.

I could be wrong. If anybody knows when and where George
Washington said or wrote this thing, or what genuine words of Washington this
saying paraphrases, or whatever the true story is, I would be quite interested
in hearing from you. Write me—or post it at Wikiquote. Nothing depends on it—but
I’d like to know.